Saki
Saki Yonaka (夜中咲希,'' Yonaka Saki''), formerly known by the name of Saki Hosokawa (細川咲希, Hosokawa Saki), is a female Daiyou from the Demon Realm, and a former member of the Yonaka Clan. She was gifted to the Seireitei as a representative of the Demon Realm some two hundred years ago and was since then admitted into the Shin’ō Academy when she showed talent of the Shinigami Arts, though she has never been admitted into any of the thirteen Divisions. Following her graduation from the Shin’ō Academy, Saki held a rather prominent position within the Clan, something that came as somewhat of a surprise given the fact that she was born a bastard. However, following the mass genocide of the Yonaka Clan at her own hands, Saki no longer has any ties to any of her contacts affiliated with the Demon Realm. Instead she has spent many years living in hiding by making frequent trips between the Soul Society and the Demon Realm in an attempt to throw pursuers off her trail. Since the Wandenreich's war with the Soul Society ended she has spent both time and valuable resources on building up an army solely built up by those with demon blood in their veins. Without question Saki's life has revolved around making both the rulings classes of the Demon Realm and the government that rules the Soul Society pay for what they have done to her and her people. As both her reputation and her army's size has grown, she and her followers have been named Inari no Narazumono (稲荷のならず者, lit. The Blackguards of Inari ''or ''The Ruffians of Inari) with Saki, personally, taking the title of Narazumono Saki (ならず者咲希, lit Blackguard Saki or Ruffian Saki). Appearance Saki appears as a young woman in her early twenties, standing at an average height and built with a very lean body structure without neither large curves nor any distinguishable muscles anywhere on her body. While her demonic heritage is faint, it is still distinguishable enough for others, especially those originating from the Demon Realm, to see that she has more than just human blood running in her veins. These traits, though heavily obscured by the majority of her human blood, are small things such as the distinctive, almost catlike, shape of her eyes, her eye color and the oval shape of her pupils. Despite having spent much of her life out in the open and more often than not on the road, Saki has never managed to gain much color in her skin tone, with only a very faint tan giving her normally pale skin a faint sheen of color. Her facial features are mostly soft, with the few exceptions being the sharp form of her eyes and her pointy chin, while cheeks, nose and eyebrows have a much softer form or arch. Her eyes are a bright ruby-red in color, a direct trait she has inherited from her father, though they have been noted to be a clearer red in a certain lightning, and has, as mentioned above, a very sharp, catlike shape. What cosmetic effort she uses to display her features even further is limited to the use of a deep red dye for her lips, and nothing else. Saki’s hair reaches down to the middle of her back, is a dark brown, almost black, color and she usually keeps it unrestrained. She rarely styles her hair in any elaborate styles, preferring simply to pin back her bangs and side-locks with a simple hair ornament or two, as she rarely sees any reason to, and has a strong dislike of flashy objects and decorations in general. Despite her strong dislike for flashy decorations of her person the clothes that adorn her body are anything but demure or humble. She dresses in a sleeveless tunic with the color of a rich, dark magenta and styled much like the upper part of a shihakusho ''with intricate, golden designs of Asian dragons on the back. Tied around her neck lies a murky orange hood with the ends bound together just above her breast, though she rarely, if ever, uses the hood to conceal her true identity or features. Along with this she wears black pants, this article of clothing also adorned with the dragon-motive that her tunic also sports, tightly wrapped around her waist and then slowly flaring out to gain a slight baggy appearance just below her kneecaps. Her arms are adorned with separate, billowing sleeves and black, skintight gloves that reach up to her elbows while her lower legs and feet are covered by sturdy, light brown boots of leather, worn from a mixture of frequent usage and age. All of those clothes, apart from the boots, are made of the finest silk that money and influence can procure, even though how Saki would ever obtain such fabrics, given her status as an outlaw and murderer, is somewhat of a mystery. Despite her constant being on the road between the Demon Realm and the Soul Society, Saki takes extreme care not to tear or somehow damage the fabric to the best of her abilities. Any tears will be mended either by forcing others to tend to her clothes or bought through underhanded favors in the underworld of both dimensions. Personality Quiet, morose, sly. Those are but three of many words that people would describe the woman that is Saki Yonaka. You will not see her unless she wishes you to. You will not feel her unless she allows you to. You will not feel superior in conversation or battle unless she wills you to. All that this demon does she does for the sake of herself and no one else. She may have once been innocent and optimistic, her mind still enveloped in the dream of loyalty and family and her childish mind drunk on the idea of love, but those thoughts were shattered from the day she was torn from the arms of those who loved her and instead sent as a glorified hostage into the arms of their enemies. Over the years of being under the watchful eye of the Seireitei and their agents, Saki has grown an innate hatred of not only them, but also of the people who decided to give her up, no matter what reasons might have stood behind their decision. To her the ''Shinigami ''that have been a constant part of her life for so long are lower than the dirt she walks on, despite her having the same powers as those she has unwillingly lived with for the last 150 years, with the exception of ''very few individuals within the Seireitei’s ranks. It does not matter if those who have been responsible for her tutoring ever intended to have caring intentions, all they have done is show her how the minds of Shinigami ''work, how to spot weaknesses and how to harness the power that have been building within her, along with her spite and innate hatred of their kind. All the time she has spent being educated, as if she was a real citizen of the Soul Society, has been to only hone her skills as a weapon and to find and exploit the weaknesses she has discovered over the years. She is willing to go to ''any length in order to get her revenge on the people who have held her as a political hostage for the better part of one and a half century, and whatever object or being that stands in her way will be blown away by the might that is within her grasp. Should one find themselves among the precious few who have earned the respect of Saki they would indeed be individuals who have given her enough reasons to not disregard their existence as something disposable. Being respected by Saki, however, does not mean that one will be safe from her ire. She will test their strengths, their weaknesses. She will seek to find a crack in the fortress before her, be it through force or stealth. She will not attack you once just to see your strength for herself, no, instead she will continue to poke and prod at your defenses, always seeking to find that one crack that will be your undoing in the end. History Childhood Saki was born as the bastard child between a Japanese noblewoman named Kinu Hosokawa and a kitsune Hanyō going by the name Honō sometime in 1791, Japan, during the latter part of the Kansei Era. Not more than a few days after Saki’s birth, her father brought both her and her mother, Kinu, to the Demon Realm in an attempt to save both his lover’s and his child’s lives. Kinu had been sick with childbed fever ever since she had birthed her child, but had been refused medical help by her family when they found out about her sickness. While Honō got both his lover and child to a capable healer before time ran out, Kinu’s reproductive system was unfortunately severely damaged by the lack of treatment while she had been in the Human World, and she was declared unfit to carry another child. In the months following her birth, both Saki and her mother was transported to a safe location within Honō’s territory in the Demon Realm where the two of them spent the next five years. In those five years, Saki was taught how to both read and write, though she never showed any outstanding progress in the lessons. Instead, she preferred to spend her time outside the confines of her home and could easily spend several hours every day in the forests that surrounded the secured location she called home. She never saw much to her father in her early childhood, except for the occasional visit once or twice every month, and instead came to be quite close with one of the soldiers that her father had stationed to protect both Kinu and his daughter. The soldier, Kyouran, became somewhat of a surrogate fatherly figure for Saki during her time in seclusion with her mother, though Kinu was quite firm in making sure that Saki never mistook Kyouran for her actual father instead of Honō. However, despite Kinu’s attempts to distance Saki from Kyouran she was unable to break the bond that had appeared between the two. As Saki grew older, and Honō’s visits gradually increased, she began distancing herself from her biological father to instead seek out Kyouran. When Honō later came to know why his relationship with his daughter had rapidly diminished when he returned to the location, his reaction to the whole ordeal was nothing short of exploding. Kyouran was removed from his duty at the secluded safehouse in the middle of Honō’s territory and instead sent out as a scout against the rivaling families and clans that surrounded Honō’s lands, while both Kinu and Saki’s interaction with the outside world was severely cut down. Hostage in the Soul Society Following the conflicts that began appearing between the Soul Society and the Demon Realm following the latter’s reveal of its existence to the former, several feuds began appearing all over the Demon Realm’s many provinces. Not only were the local Lords and Ladies of the Demon Realm both apprehensive and hostile towards the Shinigami who traveled back and forth between the two dimensions. Even in the rather secluded area of the Demon Realm where Saki and her mother were kept safe did not evade the scrutinizing eyes of the Soul Society and the Seireitei’s network of surveillance, despite Honō’s many attempts at keeping the armed newcomers away from both his wife and his child. Even so, tensions escalated not long after a mercenary band of demons were hired to lead an attack on the Shinigami patrolling and exploring the Eastern Provinces, and thus were the sparks whipped into a blazing fire as war descended once more upon the Demon Realm, though this time from an external enemy and not from one of their own. While the Demon Realm and its inhabitants were no strangers to the brutality of war, the conflict with the Shinigami escalated faster than anyone could predict with demons from all corners of the Demon Realm banding together in a stretched alliance in order to remove the threat from their lands and secure their own families. While the fighting never reached out to where Saki and Kinu were hiding, there was no end of news or reports from the front lines that the demons were either gaining or losing ground to the invaders. Eventually even the personal guards that Honō has assigned to watch over Kinu and Saki were called to aid their brethren in the battle, leaving only the minimal of protection behind for the young woman and her little girl. During the entirety of the war, Saki grew up with next to no contact with the world outside the sanctuary where she and her mother resided—their only information scarce, if believable, at all. It was during the end of the war that Honō was forced to admit that he and his forces were not enough protection for Kinu and Saki after several desperate bandit raids towards the sanctuary where they stayed. Without telling either Kinu or Saki about his intentions the two of them were transported in secret to what remained of Honō’s family in the North: the Yonaka Clan. While reluctant to part with his wife and daughter, Honō returned to the battlefield with a heavy heart, but also without knowing the internal affairs that had been happening in the Yonaka Clan since his departure from it several centuries earlier. The war between the Soul Society and the Demon Realm lasted less than five years, in terms of the Demon Realm nothing but a minor scuffle between even lesser lords feuding over land or cattle. Even so, the conflict had been more costly than any war that had thus far been fought on the grounds of the Demon Realm, and the repairs that would be needed to rebuild the destruction done by both demons as well as Shinigami were stacked higher and higher each day. As an action of good faith and forgiveness for both parties it was agreed that the two dimensions would exchange one individual for another, a child, in order to teach them the ways of the opposite faction and, hopefully, evade any further conflicts like the one lying fresh in anyone’s minds. In truth it was little more than exchanging glorified hostages. At the age of twelve, the same year that the war between Shinigami and demons came to a close, Saki was chosen among the many other children of the Demon Realm to serve as the exchanged child, while the child sent by the Shinigami was a member from one of the Four Noble Families. Without knowing why, she was sent with the Shinigami to be trained in their ways as the child from them were sent to one of the Demon Realm’s ruling families to learn the ways of the demons. Saki spent most of the first years in the Soul Society trying to escape from the different noble families that were assigned as responsible for her earliest tutelage. These escapes continued well over twenty years until she was admitted into the Shin’ō Academy. During her years as a student at the Academy the only fields in which she showed extraordinary progress were with Zanjutsu and Hakuda. It was with the help of these subjects that Saki truly began to exploit the abilities she had been granted to their fullest, dedicating herself to Zanjutsu and Hakuda as if they were a gift from the gods, and honing the abilities of perception and agility. Returning Home Sometime after her graduation from the Academy, Saki was allowed to spend some time in the Demon Realm with what remained of her family. While her human mother was no more, long dead and buried, her father, and all of her extended family through him, still remained alive. She was transported to the very compound she had been taken from all those years ago, greeted by all the family that had not fallen to the swords of the Shinigami but instead bargained with her life as if it were theirs to give away. But not her father. He had a message sent instead to his daughter that she was under no circumstances allowed to seek him out, not even if the Yonaka Clan were suggesting that she was to go visit him. To him she was no longer her daughter, but instead only a doll of the Shinigami. It was in that moment that all thoughts and delusions of peace between her and the very people who had thrown her away was shattered by the cruel reality that dominated the Demon Realm. She might have been invited back for a brief stay, lured here with promises of love and care from lips adept at telling lies and sweet nothings, but she was no longer one of them. She was of the Shinigami now, the very people she despised more than anything else in existence, and her own father would not even acknowledge her. Half mad with rage and sorrow, Saki drew her sword to point it at the false family who stood before her and that very same night the halls of the Yonaka Clan were bathed in blood. She spared no one as she wandered the halls and grounds of the enormous complex, cutting down women, children and the elderly—to her it mattered little, for they were no longer family or friends to her, not anymore. Her sword feasted on the flesh and blood of demons that night, full-blooded or not, it did not matter to her. Saki and her Zanpakuto would taste sweet, sweet revenge that night and dawn as the two of them, together, slaughtered every member of her old family that she could find. And the haze of bloodlust and anger that swept over her mind was like the sweetest anodyne for the aching wound where once her heart had sat—once whole, but now broken in a million facets and pieces. Laughing and singing as she cut through desperate demons and demonesses, Saki’s mind swirled deeper into the darkness that had occupied the back of herself since learning of the true objective behind sending her to the Seireitei. She stayed there at the Yonaka Clan’s complex for the entirety of her allowed leave from the Soul Society and their ridiculous protocols, waiting for the Shinigami to return with their bonds and restrictions, with their spells of confinement and their drawn Zanpakuto. When the Shinigami finally returned to collect their charge, they were all as one met with the stench of rotting flesh and blood splattering every inch of their destination. Amidst this violent display of rage, carnage and lust sat the very being they were charged with transporting back to the Seireitei. But no one dared go near her. Sitting in the grand hall where the Clan’s members once had greeted guests and diplomats from foreign lands and realms, still covered in the blood-soaked clothes she had worn on the day of her arrival, sat Saki Yonaka with her blade in her lap and eyes as red as the blood that surrounded her, never once blinking as they eyed the Shinigami in her family’s halls. She did nothing to deny who was responsible for the mass slaughter that had taken place, nor did she try to resist the violent handling her guards-turned-jailers used to bring her back to the Seireitei. Even so, despite following quietly when the Shinigami returned for her in the Demon Realm, Saki did not take long to plan and execute her escape from the men and women who were to escort her back. Under the cover of night, as well as a convenient cloudburst, Saki escaped into the depths of the outer, and no doubt shadier, Rukongai districts. Creating the Blackguards To be expanded... Plot Bleach: Extinction Blood like Roses Equipment Elaborate dagger: Poison: Rosary beads: Zanpakuto: Powers & Abilities Natural Abilities Huge Spiritual Pressure: While her spiritual power was nothing quite like the levels she has obtained after her achieved her Bankai... (working on this) Demon Energy (妖気, Yōki): Like any being born from the blood of a youkai, no matter how diluted the blood may be, Saki has control over a small amount of yōki within her body. While not enough to inspire fear or resentment within other beings, be they human or demonic, Saki still has enough control over her mediocre reserves to influence other’s opinion of her to a vague degree, just about enough to shape their initial impression of her. While it normally works on lesser yōkai within the Demon Realm, there is no guarantee that it works on strong individuals; most of these particular youkai are usually found among the noble classes within the Demon Realm. Through special training involving hours of meditation and the strengthening of her own body Saki strives to increase the amount of yōki ''within her body, with varying results showing from lesson to lesson. '''Master Athlete': Born with a naturally strong body, mostly due to the demonic blood flowing though her veins, Saki learned already from an early age that she could manipulate her body further than most of those around her. After she was taken to the Soul Society and later let into the Academy, Saki has since then honed her body's agility and flexibility to near perfection. Further training with her Zanpakuto has also forced her body's pliancy to grow as the wicked thorns of Juumanji can easily strike her own body if she is not careful to maneuver the whips away or around herself. Learned Abilities Kitsukatachi '(吉形, lit. ''Lucky Figures): Saki is able to summon two white foxes as a means to protect herself from enemies. While the foxes are strong enough to kill off the minor demons that populate the Demon Realm, they are not nearly strong enough to go against any of the higher ranked demons for very long. The foxes take shape after two dakini ''from Japanese Buddhism, their shapes being Shinkoō-bosatsu (辰狐王菩薩, ''Star Fox Queen) and Kiko-tennō (貴狐天王, Noble Fox-Heavenly Queen) respectively. Using a small, white chain of rosary beads infused with yōki wrapped around her wrist as a catalyst, Saki summons the two foxes by pushing what feeble amount of yōki she has into the rosary before she chants a prayer to the Patron of the Kitsune, Inari. The prayer does not have any specific requirements that Saki needs to meet, but as a general rule then the longer the prayer is, the stronger the two spirits are. Zanpakutō '''Juumanji (十万茨, A Hundred Thousand Thorns): While it's Shikai is sealed, Juumanji takes the form of a slim, silver-colored wakizashi. The edge of the blade has several small, saw-like spikes from the tip and up to the hilt, ensuring that even while sealed the weapon is sure to inflict much more damage than the usual sealed Zanpakuto. The hilt of Juumanji is wrapped in crimson silk with golden designs stitched onto the cloth. *'Shikai': Released with the command Ensnare (騙し込め, Damashikome), and paired with Saki kneeling on the ground and then stabbing only the very tip of her sword into whatever surface she stands on, Juumanji transforms from its normal steel blade into a thin, steel-like whip with several thorns protruding on all sides of the weapon. A sickly sweet odor then spreads through the area where the combatants stand their ground, not only dulling the opponent's sense of smell but also disrupting their sense of presence. * Shigure Senbari (時雨千針, Drizzle of a Thousand Needles): : Shikai Special Ability: The one special ability that Juumanji possesses, while in Shikai, is that it is capable of disrupting or even outright suck out the reiatsu of an opponent. Should one be struck by one or several of the many thorns that coat the entirety of Juumanji's whip-like appearance, their reiatsu would immediately begin to behave irregularly or even backfire completely. This is due to a special toxin brewed by Saki herself that coats the Shikai release of Juumanji at all times from the beginning to the end of a battle. The time that the reiatsu levels are disrupted all depends on how many thorns an opponent was hit with and how long they were lodged into the flesh. *'Bankai: Juuman’oku no Ibara' (十万億茨原, Field of Ten Trillion Thorns): Where the Shikai only had a single whip as offense, the Bankai release of Juumanji is instead, much like the name implies, several other whips all based from the same handle. Instead of being limited to only one target at a time, Saki now has the ability and means to debilitate all of her opponents' reiatsu and senses; a set of abilities such as these is surely to be feared on the battlefield, no matter who or what you are. : Bankai Special Ability: The havoc and suffering that the Shikai's special ability creates is only made worse by the release of her Bankai. *Juuman no Harimure (十万の針群, Flock of 100,000 Needles): Category:Female Category:Nixie the Bloody Pixie Category:Fanon Character Category:Demon Category:Demon Realm